Retail businesses are facing increased competition from the new internet and other xe2x80x9con-linexe2x80x9d businesses. Although conventional xe2x80x9cwalk-inxe2x80x9d retail shops provide the customer with clear advantages over xe2x80x9con-linexe2x80x9d shopping, such as the ability to view merchandise before buying and xe2x80x9cover the counterxe2x80x9d delivery, the xe2x80x9con-linexe2x80x9d businesses can be much more competitive in price since an on-line business merely has to change the selling price of a good or service offered on its web site.
The typical retail shop displays hundreds of items. The selling price of each item is indicated, in most cases, on a price tag attached to the item or a sign placed near to the item. Price is indicated in customer readable form, e.g. as a written or printed price tag. The price is often indicated in machine readable form as well, for example as a bar code.
The bar code price indication is machine read at the check-out counter and cross referenced to a computer record indicates its current price. Although the bar code indication of price can be quickly changed by altering the item""s computer record, the customer readable price indication cannot be easily altered since it is typically printed on each individual price tag and must be altered one at a time.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,133, which is incorporated by reference herein, describes an electronic price tag for indicating the price of an item in customer readable form, which can be altered from a central computer to which it is electronically coupled. This patent provides a way to quickly change the price of an item without having to remove old price tags and replace them with new ones each time a price change is desired.
The instant invention teaches an application which can utilize an electronic tag similar to the one described in ""133, as part of a method of doing business and system which can provide a retail shop with the pricing flexibility necessary to effectively compete with on-line businesses and other xe2x80x9ce-commercexe2x80x9d innovations. The invention provides a method and apparatus for measuring various types of environmental conditions relevant to the business and the prices charges, for example the number of customers entering the shop in a given time interval, the time of day, the date, special sales events and the prices charged by competing businesses.